Welcome to this Daniele Gottardo interview, shot at the french festival Guitare-en-Scène in 2016, the day after the 60th anniversary of Joe Satriani. We discussed about Daniele’s relationship with Joe, his musician development and also his work at JamTrackCentral.

You can activate the subtitles in the YouTube video player (english and french).

Saturax :Hi there, it’s Saturax from JoeSatrianiUniverse.com, and we are at the french festival Guitare en Scène with Daniele Gottardo. Daniel, nice to meet you.

“Je m’appelle Daniele. I don’t… I’m not able to say any other things in French, and I wanted to say it. Nice to meet you too and thank you so much for having me on Joe Satriani Universe.”

Saturax : Can you define the evolution of your album Non Temperato compared to your first album?

My first album is typically a rock-oriented, guitar-oriented album, in the style of, we can say guitar players like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, especially for the use of the guitar into the composition I mean, the guitar in Frenzy of Ecstasy, the main voice isalways in front of the music. For this reason, I compare this kind of composition with the classic guitar-oriented style. And after this album, I tried to find other solutions about the use of the guitar in the composition, and I always liked to study and listening to classical music, always liked to study score, orchestra score and reading a lot about how many counterpoint. It was like a passion, different from the guitar but I wanted to put these different things together.

For my first album I still wasn’t really ready to do, then I took the time and in Non Temperato tried to combine the use of counterpoint with classical instruments, woodwinds, strings especially. Then the use of the guitar is not always in front, it’s not a substitution of the voice like in a pop song, the guitar makes also this function but also goes behind, and goes aside the regiment, playing different roles, and in counterpoint you have different voices and they have the same equal importance. I wanted to sometimes be the lead of the instruments, the main voice but sometimes I wanted to be the secondary voice, and also amore secondary importance.

And in Non Temperato it is here, mainly. Trying to put the guitar in different situations, like a guitar, not acoustic and not classical, the timber of rock, then I needed to use a lot of work about the timber, all is related.

Saturax : You mastered a lot of Guitar Hero techniques like tapping of course, legato, and you have a special feeling that touch people, among that what does Joe Satriani inspired you?

“Of course, Joe Satriani inspired me when I was developing my skills on the guitar, and you know, it’s like when you need to learn a language or any kind of musical style because music is a language, we have a lot of different languages in music at school. First you need to have a lot of examples for being credible. For sure, Joe was an interest for me, especially because he was a great model for try to develop a consistency on my playing and the control of the notes, the use of the bending, the vibrato. Joe Satriani for sure has a great consistency in what he’s playing, he’s very consistent, it’s the term I find now.

That was from a practical perspective. For an instrumental perspective, for sure he’s very important for the use of the guitar, a composition like with a song form, and the use of the guitar like a voice. He’s -and was- very important to bring the guitar more popular, you know. Like when we were saying in the beginning Frenzy of Ecstasy has this idea in my mind, to use the guitar like a substitution over the voice. Then yes Joe was an influence for both the instruments and both for the use of the guitar, in the composition for a guitar instrument.”

Saturax : Who is the musician who influenced you the most?

“It’s difficult to say… I have a lot of different influences and time changes. At the beginning I was very inspired by Ace Frehley from Kiss, then I started to develop more technical things from the rock area. Then I listened a lot of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen to develop the technique of the guitar players. Also I have fusion, rock fusion periods, like Greg Howe, this kind of stuff. Then I have more jazz periods, like Charlie Christian, like Kurt Rosenwinkel for instance.

I have periods more like classic jazz, I listen to a lot of Charlie Parker, Barry Harris, other musicians, try to put it all together, I’m not a purist of every gender. I’m not able to be a purist of rock, of metal, of shred, of classical, of blues, no, I like all the languages. Maybe it is a problem, maybe it is better to be a purist, and you need to speak a language very well, but I’m not able to do that at the moment. I like to make a relation. Then yes, a lot of different influences, this is for guitar.

About composition, my influences are a lot about classical composers from the baroque era, italian baroque like Arcangelo Corelli, who is my favorite musician ever. Then two more 20th century composers especially russian area, Stravinski, a part of Ivanov, Chaporine. I like also Ankner composer, he inspires me a lot.Different influences in time, I have not a specific one and sorry if I haven’t a specific influence. It depends on the period.”

Saturax : How does it feel to play at this festival Guitare-En-Scène, among guitar legends like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Carlos Santana?

“It’s a great honor to me to be here at this amazing festival, because like you said they have these here, but they have other times to have incredible, important musicians and guitar players for the history of the modern guitar. And to be here today to play on the same stage of Carlos, it’s… I feel very lucky. Makes sense for all the work I did. I feel very lucky to be here, absolutely.”

Saturax : What advice would you give to the guitar players who want to be professional musicians?

“Not easy to say. For a professional musician I think, everything starts from a passion and it needs to be a desire to play, and of course being a musician starts with a desire to play. Though it is important to keep a consistency of playing and find a new stimulus without losing the earlier idea of ourselves, as a player. You say, what I suggest to become a professional is maybe to think how to stay a student sometimes, sometimes you can start being a professional musician, and then music is a delicate thing. If it starts to be too much a job, it’s okay, sure, you are doing the job you like and it’s perfect. But, if we want to be a musician, we need to keep alive the essence of music, and that is not a job.

Then I find, to me, this balance is difficult, it can be difficult to become a professional musician, but when you arrive at that, the difficult part is finding the balance to be, like a student, to find new solutions for not becoming like a machine, predictable, to avoid staying in the comfort zone, like “okay, I study a lot, now I’m a professional musician”, and then you start to be in a comfort zone. You get a predictable player, become a predictable musician, and for music and art it is not good. We always must to be like when we start, to me. It is my thinking, you know. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that I needn’t think to be a professional musician. I don’t consider myself a professional, for a lot of reasons. For other reasons yes because my daily job is musician.

Teaching, like I said I love to teach, but I always, every day, okay, I reset the guitar player I was two years ago. Reset, like I’m able to play from zero, you know. Otherwise in five years I can become super old maybe. So don’t try to be a professional musician. Try to be sincere, and always find ideas for continuing to play. Sometimes it can be difficult, if you play instrumental guitar music it can be difficult, okay but you can play pop music and you can do a session, it’s important to find ourselves you know. And then , find yourselves.”

Saturax : Thank you very much Daniele Gottardo for having answered the questions, and I leave you the final words.

Okay, thank you to Joe Satriani Universe again for having me here, it was a very cool interview, and see you another time in Guitare-en-Scène or around!

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